Climategate: MoveOn’s Triple Whopper
Air quality in the United States has improved dramatically over the past 40 years, yet MoveOn.Org wants you to believe that breathing the air is like being a pack-a-day smoker.
MoveOn broadcasts this disinformation in TV ads bashing Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Ben Nelson (D-NB), and Mary Landrieu (D-LA). The ads show little leaguers, a mother and her bottle-feeding infant, track athletes, and even a mother giving birth all smoking cigarettes. As these images flash by, the text of the ads says:
While Senator Landrieu [or Lincoln, or Nelson] works to roll back the Clean Air Act
Many Americans are already smoking the equivalent of a pack a day.
Just from breathing the air.
Senator Landrieu [or Lincoln, or Nelson], Americans need the Clean Air Act.
Leave it alone.
The MoveOn ad is a triple whopper, piling falsehood upon falsehood upon falsehood. No American smokes the equivalent of a pack a day just by breathing. The senators are not working to “roll back” the Clean Air Act. The policy they support — one that MoveOn opposes — would not slow any federal or state efforts to clean the air. Let’s examine each falsehood in turn.
MoveOn claims that “many” Americans breathe the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes a day. Cigarette smoking accounts for 30% of all cancer deaths in the United States, and nine out of 10 lung cancer deaths. So how does cigarette smoke compare with outdoor air in regard to airborne carcinogens?
Nazaroff and Singer (2004), a study by researchers at UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, found that, by breathing indoor “environmental tobacco smoke” (ETS), non-smokers who live with a smoker each year inhale 1.2 to 150 times more of six known carcinogens than they inhale from “ambient” (outdoor) sources. Smokers themselves get a bigger dose of carcinogens, since they inhale both first- and second-hand smoke.
Not only is MoveOn’s pack-a-day claim false, it could also harm “the children,” because it trivializes the risks of smoking. After all, a gullible teenager might reason, if breathing is as unhealthy as smoking, then how bad can smoking be?
Maybe what MoveOn means is that people living in some U.S. cities inhale as much airborne particulate matter (PM) as a smoker gets from a pack a day. Much recent EPA action targets the so-called fine particles, those measuring 2.5 micrometers (μm) or less in size, known in regulatory parlance as PM2.5. Elevated levels of PM2.5 are associated with increased risks of cardiopulmonary and cardiovascular diseases. Do many (or any) of us get a pack-a-day dose of PM2.5 just by breathing?
Koong et al. (2009), a 24-country study by three prestigious health institutes, found substantially higher PM2.5 levels in workplace ETS than in the ambient air, in all regions of the world. In the Americas, for example, PM2.5 levels average 248 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3) in workplaces where smoking is allowed. On the other hand, PM2.5 in outdoor air averages less than 15 μg/m3, and even the most polluted U.S. cities average about 20 μg/m3, or less than one-tenth the 248 μg/m3 of PM2.5 found in smoking venues.
Similarly, Proescholdbell et al. (2009), a study published by the Centers for Disease Control, reports that in six counties in North Carolina, PM2.5 levels in smoke-free restaurants and bars averaged 15 μg/m3 compared to 253 μg/m3 in smoking venues. EPA’s Air Trends Report (p. 21) shows that no city has a 24-hour average PM2.5 level higher than 80 μg/m3 — nowhere near the 253 μg/m3 smoking establishments average year-round.
Again, common sense suggests that active smokers get a bigger dose of PM2.5 from the butt end of a cigarette than non-smokers get from ETS, and the scientific literature confirms this. Pope et al. (2009), a study published by the American Heart Association, plainly states: “The estimated daily dose of PM2.5 from typical long-term exposure to SHS (second-hand smoke or ETS) or ambient air pollution is extremely small compared with the estimated dose from active cigarette smoking.” Consequently, “The estimated relative risks from active cigarette smoking, even at relatively light smoking levels, are substantially larger than the relative risks from ambient air pollution or SHS.”
Let’s look at the numbers behind these statements. The daily dose of a pack-a-day smoker (20 cigarettes per day) is 140 to 240 milligrams of PM2.5. The daily dose of a non-smoker living in cities with high annual average PM2.5 levels (24.5 μg/m3) is 0.44 to 0.56 milligrams. In other words, the pack-a-day smoker inhales hundreds of times more PM2.5 than non-smokers do. Indeed, the Pope study reveals that smoking just one cigarette delivers 12 to 27 times the daily dose of PM2.5 that non-smokers get from the air in cities with high PM2.5 levels.
MoveOn is blowing smoke — nowhere in the United States is breathing the equivalent of a pack a day or even one cigarette a day.
Turning now to the second falsehood, none of the senators is working to “roll back” the Clean Air Act. The senators have crossed party lines to support a resolution, introduced by Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, to stop the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from dealing itself, trial lawyers, and activist judges into a position to set climate policy for the nation.
Here’s the pertinent background you won’t get from MoveOn’s attack ads. Last December, EPA issued a finding that emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. If this were just a scientific assessment of the relevant literature — like the surgeon general’s famous finding in 1964 that cigarette smoke causes cancer — the Senate would have no business voting on it.
But unlike the surgeon general’s report, which did not presume even to advise Congress on policy options, EPA’s finding will trigger a regulatory cascade through multiple provisions of the Clean Air Act. EPA could end up administering global warming regulations more costly and intrusive than any Congress has considered and either rejected or failed to pass, yet without the people’s elected representatives ever voting on the policies.
As even the EPA all-but-acknowledges, the endangerment finding tees up several “absurd results” that are contrary to congressional intent. For example, EPA will have to apply Clean Air Act pre-construction permitting requirements to tens of thousands of small businesses, and operating permit requirements to millions. Unless EPA poaches legislative power and amends the Act, as it proposes to do in its legally dubious “tailoring rule,” the permitting programs will crash under the own weight, freezing construction activity and putting millions of firms in legal limbo. Apply the Clean Air Act to CO2 — the inescapable consequence of the endangerment finding — and the Act mutates into a gigantic anti-stimulus program.
Murkowski’s resolution would avert this debacle. In so doing, it would also remove the necessity for EPA to play lawmaker and violate the separation of powers in order to avoid “absurd results.” The Murkowski resolution would be good policy even if we were not experiencing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
MoveOn also neglects to mention that the endangerment finding logically commits EPA to establish national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for CO2 set below current atmospheric levels. Even a global depression lasting several decades would not be enough to bring America (and the world) into attainment with such a standard. Yet the Clean Air Act obligates states to attain “primary” (health-based) NAAQS within five or at most 10 years, or face various restrictions and sanctions such as the loss of federal highway funds. Regulating CO2 under the NAAQS program is a recipe for national economic disaster. Murkowski’s resolution would nip that mischief in the bud as well.
Although a strong case can be made that the endangerment finding is scientifically flawed, that is not what Sen. Murkowski’s resolution is about. Contrary to misrepresentation by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and others, the resolution is not a referendum on climate science. It is a referendum on whether bureaucrats with a vested interest in expanding their power should make climate policy. The resolution would veto the regulatory force and legal effect of the endangerment finding — not its scientific reasoning or conclusions. Indeed, Sen. Murkowski is not a global warming skeptic, nor is she opposed in principle to greenhouse gas regulation. She simply believes that climate policy is too important to be made by a bureaucracy with no accountability to the American people.
The Murkowski resolution would not change one word of the Clean Air Act. It would not alter any program that EPA administers under the Act. It would not reduce funding for any EPA program. It would, however, avert an era of unaccountable regulation. It’s this defense of democracy that MoveOn.org vilifies.
MoveOn’s third whopper is the notion — implied rather than stated — that CO2 is an air contaminant like tobacco smoke and, thus, that anyone who opposes EPA regulation of CO2 must be in favor of polluting the air. Unless EPA regulates CO2 emissions, MoveOn suggests, even more people will smoke just by breathing.
This claim too is complete bunk. An odorless, colorless trace gas that is non-toxic to humans and animals at more than 30 times ambient levels, CO2 is an essential plant nutrient, the basic building block of the planetary food chain. Animal life depends on plant life, and plants raised in CO2-enriched environments grow larger and faster, use water more efficiently, and are more resilient to environmental stresses such as drought and air pollution. Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse (heat trapping) gas, but so is water vapor, which obviously is not air pollution. Calling CO2 emissions “carbon pollution” is a rhetorical trick designed to fool the unwary into believing the kind of nonsense MoveOn.org is peddling.
History proves that cleaning the air does not depend on capping or otherwise restricting CO2 emissions. U.S. air quality has improved dramatically, decade by decade for almost as long as we’ve been measuring it. Indeed, particulate matter has been dropping since at least the late 1950s. Between 1980 and 2008, nationwide air pollution levels decreased 79% for carbon monoxide, 25% for ozone, 92% for lead, 46% for nitrogen dioxide, and 71% for sulfur dioxide. Between 1990 and 2008, air pollution levels decreased 31% for coarse particulates (PM10) and 20% for PM2.5.
This progress will continue under regulations already on the books or planned, as motor vehicle fleets turn over to cleaner vehicles and new capital stock replaces old. The bottom line: America’s air is very clean by historical standards, and pollution levels will continue to drop under existing EPA and state requirements that will not be affected in any way by the Murkowski resolution.
MoveOn’s ad campaign is a falsehood from top to bottom. MoveOn.org should promptly do three things: (1) Apologize to Sens. Landrieu, Lincoln, and Nelson for subjecting them to a smear campaign. (2) Apologize to its members for feeding them falsehoods instead of providing truthful information. (3) Return every penny to anyone whom the ads frightened or angered into contributing money to MoveOn.Org.
“We come from France.”
Left wing, control freak, Green NAZI moonbats just like Mohammedans never let trivial things like the TRUTH and LOGIC and SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE get in the way of a good story to support THEIR control freak legislation.
Well, of course. MoveOn and its affiliates are pro-totalitarianism organizations. To maximize the power of the State, maximize fear among ordinary persons. If we weren’t afraid of something even worse than the State’s routine predations and oppressions, why would we put up with it for a moment longer?
“We come from France.”
And we can inhale an entire pack of Newports in one shot!
If the Moveon Nazis weren’t using the global warming scare to try to take control of America, they would be using some other big lie.
Isn’t lying to the public to raise funds perpetrating an illegal fraud? I would like to see the head of Moveon.org handcuffed and frog marched to federal prison.
Mr. Lewis, excellent article.
Q: I’ve heard that a WHO study, done early in this century or late in the last, actually found that non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke in average amounts, actually benefited from it; that they were made stronger and more resilient – sort of analogous to their immune systems getting a boost from having had the flu. But I also heard that the study was “taken off the shelves” as soon as as the results were published, a la Climategate.
Can you shed any light on this?
Thanks
1st mistake is moveon.org being taken seriously on anything.
2nd mistake is the use of the word caused. Not even cigarette smoke can be said to CAUSE cancer. If that were the case every single person who ever smoked would get cancer. It increases the risk factors. Why can’t people speak honestly about it?
This article demonstrates the difficulty in countering the loon nonsence. The left can spout any type of lie they want because the lame street media will not verify or challenge what is said, only promote it. It is apparent that some amount of effort was required to factually dipute the lies presented. One good comes from this practice of the left. More and more people are realizing that if something is said by the left, it is more likely than not, a lie. I hope for the day when people will read anything from the left and through experience, dismiss it.
Ms. Lewis:
“Moveon’s ad campaign is a falsehood from top to bottom.”
Of couse it is, but that doesn’t matter to me.
I don’t smoke menthols, thanks.
The real threat, killing threat is taxes. I work construction in New England. I have to work all year round, almost exclusively outdoors. Unlike government officials, a half day isn’t go home with full pay, its a half day of pay. So, I, we work on ice and snow which is on beams and decks and roofs. In the rain, sleet, snow, damp with power tools. Other blue collor workers work in bad weather. Truck drivers drive when it isn’t safe, because they get paid by the mile. Fishermen have to go out to see in stormy weather because yuppie government scientist and their enviro wacko friends devise killing schedules. I could go on.
We all have to do this dangerous work because HALF OF OUR LIVES GO TO TAXES. FOREVER. To lefty yuppie scum. And, basically, we are broke.
It’s as if it is a new type of serfdom. Were we, and other taxpayers work for others. Not ourselves, not our family.
Also, as in the example of truckers. Half of the soot is due to …..taxes. You have to, in the case of truckers, drive twice as much, to hand over half to the government, so that you can have half to exists.
How much of pollution is the result of having to work, drive to work, have a second car to work to pay taxes? Eh?
I should care what the trust fund lefties at MoveOn think? Please.
“Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse (heat trapping) gas, but so is water vapor, which obviously is not air pollution. Calling CO2 emissions “carbon pollution” is a rhetorical trick designed to fool the unwary into believing the kind of nonsense Moveon.org is peddling.”
And as usual, by declaring something to be harmfull, the enviro-nazis will go overboard and not just want to reduce it but want to eliminate it completely. They probably have no idea that we ‘pollute’ the air with CO2 not just thru industrial activity but every time we exhale.
Now you know why math and science are so very important in education. The consistently persistent dumbing down of science and math has led us to this watershed moment. The EPA no longer relies on hard scientific fact as it can bamboozle the majority of citizens and their elected representatives with selective lies and questionable legal logic. Climate change is real, global warming is false, however, the EPA as a whole, elected officials, the media and citizens use the terms interchangeably and with no correction. This is why science is so important in this era, so you can spot the lies being spouted by people who control where your tax dollars are spent and react quickly enough to do something about that flagrant theft.
Good to see the actual numbers. But… damn I’m glad I took that environmental engineering class, last semester. Makes the terms make a lot more sense.
sms CO2 is NOT a pollutant it is a VITAL part of the cycle of life and its effect on HEAT TRAPPING and Global Warming has NEVER been proved and that goes for the 0.03% of MAN MADE CO2 in the atmosphere too. More CO2 more plants, more plants, more food and more oxygen. Less CO2 less plants less food less oxygen . Simple isn’t it but not for MOONBATS. So Green NAZIS are not just ignorant they are ANTI LIFE.
It is not the dumbing down of maths and science that caused the CAGW fraud to be launched.
It is lying by Al Gore, complicit scientists (M Mann) and “green” fund raising organizations.
The lies have been outed with Climategate.
The failure of Obama to drop the EPA endangerment finding will lead to a rout in this falls elections.
Most people want Obama to succeed as a President, but he is on track to do exactly the opposite!
Everyone has apparently forgotten that not long ago, millions of homes and businesses burned coal for heat. The air is a lot cleaner now just because of that one fact. And burning coal produced carbon monoxide as well. And don’t forget the feces and urine from thousands of horses on our city streets – before the invention of the automobile eliminated that health hazard.
We are healthier now than at any time in human history. But you would never know this by listening to the hysterical enviro Nazis. Speaking of which…
That Audi commercial that aired during the Super Bowl about the Eco-Police arresting people for using an incandescent light bulb, using plastic bags, etc. is a glimpse into the future.
For the sheeple, this diet of lies is their daily fare, and they have no mechanism for determining the truth of it–hope there are still plenty of people who do read and learn from this sort of thing.
Drudge linked to a time magazine report which explained how lots of snowfall was in fact evidence of global warming. It also repeated the oft-debunked lie that the last decade was warmest on record.
“Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse (heat trapping) gas,”
Actually, it may not be.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1002/1002.0597.pdf
It’s time we start realizing that they Hype from alarmists was just that. HYPE.
Oh, and don’t forget the ozone layer and CFC’s. Wonderful article. The REASONABLE person would say there can be a debate among legistlators (some having fossil fuel hands up their butts running them as puppetts) and come out with responsible legistlative compromises to limit pollution (i.e., the carbon monoxide, ozone, lead, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide). Remember the acid rain skeptics ? Ths smog skeptics ? Things got better (only somewhat better on acid rain) but with concerted effort by leftists in a legistlative forum (yes, something for both ends of the spectrum to hate).
“Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse (heat trapping) gas”. Hold up there partner, Lindzen and Choi published research (August 09, GRL) based on satellite observations showing that outgoing radiation is not trapped by CO2. This refuted the trapping assumptions used in most climate models.
16. Mike: “Everyone has apparently forgotten that not long ago, millions of homes and businesses burned coal for heat.”
I’m older (68), so I remember – including the horse & dog poop on the roads. It was really the filthiest of times, although it was better than no sewers with wood heat and a house full of cigarette smokers. My mother died when she was 19, and my father at 42. My kids don’t believe me when I tell them that the air is much cleaner now than when I was a child. I don’t know where they’ve picked up the nonsense about dirty air.
CO2 is nesacary for life.
the easiest wa to show a person unable to come to their own conclusion about the effect of CO2 on our planet is this :
if the planet was a 10 thousand seat stadiun then CO2 would occupy 4 seats.
the nut cases (lying scumbag liberasl/marxist) say that if CO2 occupies one more seat life on the planet will become impossible.
there is something impossible here but it is not what the warmin/changing believers would like.
The left is in full propaganda mode on every subject these days, they will say any lie to force their preconceived world view forgetting the facts and realities before them.
20. Claude Hopper:
That’s not really what Lindzen and Choi said. Their paper (and a similar one from Spencer) says that climate sensitivity is low, rather than the inflated numbers from the IPCC.
Let’s not go fighting battles that don’t need to be fought.
MoveOn, what a silly group. Suitable only a target of derision.
Wasn’t this kind of stuff supposed to disappear once Our Lord and Savior Obama was coronated?
The foul air and all that, I mean, not the smear campaigning…..
Tobacco plants hold onto passing radon particles for some reason (maybe the tar / the fact that they’re sticky plants). The reason it causes cancer is your smoking concentrated radio active particles.
Even better, they’re a size that the body has trouble flushing out so they lodge in the body and hang out (the body is pretty efficient in getting rid of other harmful stuff).
So yeah, you might be breathing a lot of dust… but comparing it to cigarette smoke is way off. and yeah, I grew up in the 70s, anyone who can remember them can tell you the air is cleaner today. You can even see the haze in old pictures from the time…
14 Pragmatist
“sms CO2 is NOT a pollutant …”
I am not sure if you are trying to straiten me out about CO2 or if you are agreeing with me that the Green Nazis are ignorant and anti-life. Which ever, we DO agree. Without CO2 not only plant life would die, but we would too. CO2 is necessary for respiration to occur. In other words, we can’t breath without CO2 any more than we can breath without oxigen. The only difference is, our bodies produce CO2, we don’t get it from the environment, hence my comment that “we pollute (by enviro nazi definition)every time we exhale”.
16. Mike “Eco-Police arresting people for using an incandescent light bulb, using plastic bags, etc. is a glimpse into the future.” Yes, It’s getting absurd. Soon it will be illegal to breath out. Ok to breath in, just not out, unless you exhale into a filter.
So let me get this straight,…At a time when incumbant Democrats are already scrambling for their seats or resigning in despair because of the threat to their party as a whole because of voter anger over pork spending and the problems associated with Obamacare the Moveon hirelings of George Soros, dogs of the Democrat Party that they are, have decided to leap into the breech by weakening the chances of 3 of their own Senators by running ads against them because they weren’t sufficiently leftist? Which, if they succeed, will have the effect of making open seats of all 3 Senate seats and thus enhancing the chances of Republicans without any sympathy for their positions being elected to all three seats? o_O
I guess Tolkien was right when he wrote, “Oft Evil will Evil mar!” ^_^
“The MoveOn ad is a triple whopper, piling falsehood upon falsehood upon falsehood.”
I believe the correct term for this is “traveshamockery” as in:
It’s a travesty.
It’s a sham.
It’s a mockery.
It’s a traveshamockery!
I have the same question as #5 Kirtz1. How is this not fraud in the very legal sense of the word? Ask Pfizer, Kellogg, Proctor & Gamble and your local Mattress Emporium if they would get away with such gross misrepresentations in their advertising.
Currently there is an attempt by private sector groups in California to collect signatures in support of a referendum that temporarily suspends AB32, the California “Global Warming Solutions Act “ , better known as “California at the head of the class in stupid legislation tricks”. It is an extreme job killing bill that gives immense power to the unelected Air Resources Board (sound familiar?).
It is a known fact that if we shut down all State’s industry and commerce, if we all stopped breathing and if we plugged the backsides of all of the State’s cows – we could only decrease world CO2 emissions by 1.4 percent. Even it in its most draconian form, AB32 would only accomplish a fraction of that.
It has also been conservatively estimated that this bill will cost 1.1 million jobs. The state, rather than listening to the people as they should, is attacking back with all manner of lies and exaggerations – claiming that reversal of AB32 will unleash terrible pollution and kill all of the green jobs that are “just around the corner”. This “green jobs” notion itself is a big falsehood representing a lot of wishful thinking by economic illiterates. So where are the Truth in Advertising laws when we need them?
http://www.junkscience.com
We all emit CO2 when exhaling. I therefore note that MoveOn has moved on from its initial purpose of defending Bill Clinton’s right to insert his **** wherever he pleased, to preventing us from breathing heavily.
Yeah and water runs up hill.It’s all a giant fraud folks.
New Utopian (Comment 6), thanks for the compliment. I am unaware of any such WHO study. Although I am not a doctor, my personal advice is don’t smoke and avoid other people’s fumes. Breathing elevated levels of particulates, carcinogens, and other toxic substances strikes me as a bad idea, and the medical literature abundantly confirms this.
Richb313 (Comment 7), I agree that sloppy speech leads to sloppy thinking, which makes us more susceptible to manipulative propaganda. But in this case, I think you are quibbling. The Surgeon General’s 2004 report on smoking and health provides a useful terminology:(http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/2004/pdfs/chapter1.pdf). It distinguishes between evidence “(1) sufficient to infer a causal relationship, (2) suggestive but not sufficient to infer a causal relationship, (3) inadequate to infer the presence or absence of a causal relationship, or (4) suggestive of no causal relationship.” The report finds evidence sufficient to infer a causal relationship between smoking and cancers of the lungs, stomach, esophagus, larynx, oral cavity and pharynx, uterine cervix, pancreas, kidney, and acute myeloid lukemia, plus evidence sufficient to infer a causal relationship between smoking and various cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
JD (Comment 18), your first link is to a paper that I confess is way beyond my mathematical competence to understand. Other than this paper, I am unaware of any study denying that atmospheric CO2 is one of those gases that helps keep the Earth habitably warm. The second link is to a paper that rebuts the hypothesis that CO2 concentrations are the key factor controlling global temperatures during integlacial periods. Even if correct (I believe it is), it would not be evidence that CO2 does not absorb and re-radiate long-wave (heat) radiation.
Claude Hopper (Comment 20), Prof. Lindzen’s study does not deny that CO2 is a greenhouse (heat-trapping) gas. Rather, it denies that the climate system is as sensitive to increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration as IPPC climate models assume. Whereas IPCC models predict 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius of warming from a doubling of CO2 concentrations above pre-industrial levels, Lindzen’s study predicts 0.5 degrees Celsius. Lindzen agrees with the IPCC that in a hypothetical climate without feedbacks, positive or negative, a doubling of CO2 concentrations would increase global tempeatures by 1.2 degrees Celsius.
Chuck (Comment 30), “traveshmockery” has a nice ring to it.
Mike (Comment 31), I feel your pain, brother, but applying truth in adversising to political speech would open the door to censorship and repression. Jefferson’s remedy is still the best: “And finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”
In addition to the above comments that not the the Lindzen and Choi article in no way refutes (or attempts to refute) that CO2 is a green house gas their methods were flawed. Lindzen and Choi misused the ERBE data. Due to the path of the satellite (it went in and out of day/night cycles) there is an aliasing problem if the data is not used in multiples of a 36 day cycle (36, 72, etc). Lindzen and Choi did not do this. when this is done the results are in line with the models.
Regarding the rather specious CO2 is necessary for life so it can’t be a pollutant argument, as with most pollutants and poisons it is all about dosage. (We need oxygen to live but if the partial pressure is too high it will kill us)
No. It is a byproduct of respiration. If there were no CO2 respiration would produce it and there would no longer be no CO2. It would in no way prevent respiration.
Marlow, it is a nice touch for an author to respond at the end to some of the reader comments. Thank you.
I am not, as Jack Nicholson said in one of his movies, a “last word freak”. However, while Jefferson is eloquent and probably correct on this subject, his suggestion is also highly idealized – to the point of being impractical in certain situations – for example mattress ads and IPO prospectuses.
I just feel that political players should be held to the same or better legal standards with respect to “truth” as in the private sector. And even though one’s view of the “truth” can be highly subjective, some of the more egregious lies and falsifications would not pass through even the most politicized adjudication processes (if the courts become purely political then we are all cooked anyway). If by clear and obvious falsification, a politician, a party or a political action group is able to pass economically harmful and freedom sapping legislation, the aggrieved among us should be able to seek recidivation. Such class action suits would be only about the use of falsehoods – not about the merits of the legislation. Those in favor would be free to try again – only this time forced to be more honest or to avoid fabrication of data and “facts” as is happening with AGW and EPA mandates. Such suits should be “loser pays” to avoid frivolous suits and harassment.
In short, Lady Truth is in affect “ by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons” because of the huge advantage of incumbent political groups and their ability to shape the debate and control the messages. This is way more powerful and dangerous and harmful to citizens than anything in the private sector could ever be.
The reality is that the USA is on the verge of Victory. Victory for the Environment merits a VE day celebration. It is, but for but two cities, almost an environmental Victory now. Every other municipality in the USA has cleaned its air. Only two cities remain, whose air has certainly gotten cleaner, but not yet clean enough.
When Houston and Los Angeles achieve the cleanup needed, we can hold the VE National Holiday celebrations. I recommend we do it on the anniversary of Earth Day. Other dates are possible. Perhaps more appropriate, would be dates like the Patent day for the GM Catalytic converter, or the Nuclear power plant, or the diesel-electric Locomotive, or the launch of the first oil powered ship. Another date to be commemorated was GM’s first license of the technology to a competitor, essentially for free, to spread the technology of the catalytic converter.
But we should begin now to plan for that VE Day event. It’s coming soon.
We need do nothing more than simply maintain our standards, and not slide back wards. The aging dirty fleet of older, dirtier cars, when replaced with new models, and other steps just recently enacted, will be more than enough to accomplish the Final Victory. The steps taken under the Bush Administration, and confirmed by the Obama Administration, to bring large Trucks, Locomotives, Marine Shipping, Construction equipment, and Farm implement engines into the regulations, will help.
The environmental cleanup has taken a century, or more.
There was the decision to shift to oil fired shipping, instead of coal. Diesel-electric and electrified Rail were cleaner than steam-coal locomotives and were sold and deployed. General Electric and Westinghouse companies and their engineers, pioneered much cleaner commercial nuclear power for America and the world. It all helped.
In the early 1970s USA citizens urged the acceleration of regulation by creating the EPA. General Motors effort led to the catalytic converter; and Chrysler pioneered computer controlled ICE engines. The cleanup technology they pioneered for autos and light trucks, led to America cleanup achievements and for the rest of the World’s automakers to follow.
These and other advances accelerated during the last 40 years. They will complete the final Air Quality victory drive.
It is time to consider how to demobilize the Army of regulators. And plan the size and shift to a peacetime, maintenance Army of environmental regulation.
How will we spend the ‘Peace Dividend’? I recommend deficit reduction, but let the debate begin, now.
MoveOn.org is trying to blunt the triumph of many Americans over the last century; and as always, once again tell everyone that America and Americans are dirty, filthy polluters of the World. Their constant defiling of the country grows wearisome, as well as just plain wrong.
36Jeb.
“No. It is a byproduct of respiration. If there were no CO2 respiration would produce it and there would no longer be no CO2. It would in no way prevent respiration”
Um “if there were no CO2 respiration would produce it”???? Not exactly. Your assertion implies that we wouldn’t produce it at all if we got it some other way. While we may get some from the air, it would be better to say that regardless of CO2 introduced into the body by other means, we produce it anyway. Hence my comment that you can’t have one without the other. Perhaps I should refrase: Exhalation of CO2 is just as necessary as the inhalation of O2.
There are fundamental disagreements about the definitions of “economically harmful” and “freedom sapping” and they happen to fall along political lines. I can get behind you on wanting to do something about the false statements on points of fact but can’t think of anything feasible that wouldn’t be too large an impingement on freedom of speech. It should be the role of the media to report on the falsehoods, but that doesn’t make for exciting programing and good ratings. You get more eyes when you yell than when you speak rationally and the analogous situation is the same on the blogs.
21) Larsen:
Actually I’m not old enough to personally remember homes with coal furnances. But I remember the coal chute on the side of my grandparent’s house in Detroit. My grandparents said the air was so dirty you couldn’t hang laundry to dry outside without soot getting on everything.
I am, however, old enough to remember the global cooling/ice age scare during the 1970s. They predicted stronger, more frequent tornadoes and thunderstorms, famine and mass species extinction as the climate cooled. Concerned scientists said if we don’t act soon, it would be too late. Any of that sound familiar? What if we had spent trillions to fight global cooling?
One key difference between the 1970s and now: no internet and no 24 hr cable news cycle to keep the hype going.
I’ve posted this before but it bears repeating: Global warming is an attack on capitalism by the left. The left has tried for years to convince the world that capitalism causes poverty and misery. That’s why Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle – about working in Chicago meat packing plants. But the evidence is in: capitialism causes wealth and prosperity, so now the left is trying to convince people that capitalism causes bad weather (global warming).
I don’t remember who originated this quotation but it is appropriate: the problem with capitialism is capitialists. The problem with socialism is socialism.
Mr. Lewis, thanks for the reply. If I can dig up anything on the WHO study, I will post it here. Again, great article.
#23 Greg “The left is in full propaganda mode on every subject these days, they will say any lie to force their preconceived world view forgetting the facts and realities before them.”
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I suggest that it’s ‘ignoring’ rather than ‘forgetting’, but you’re on target.
It is amazing how long that little piece of misinformation has hung on. There were a couple of articles in popular magazines because a couple of scientist noticed a potential trend and commented that if it were to continue…
There were not dozens (now hundreds) of scientific journal articles detailing research that supported that hypoothesis, and none of the major scientific organizations of the day looked at the evidence and concluded that the cooling hypothesis was most likely true (unlike today when virtually all major scientific orgs have done re: the warming hypothesis).
If your view requires a mass conspiracy of scientists then you really need to rethink your view.
“none of the major scientific organizations of the day looked at the evidence and concluded that the cooling hypothesis was most likely true”
Are the NOAA and the NAS major enough for you?
As reported by Newsweek April 28 1975
http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf
Jeb,
With all due respect, it was considerably more than “a couple”. I can remember going through about a decade’s worth of Futurist magazines alone while researching a different topic and getting *at least* 12 or 15 “coming ice age” articles from that one alone without even trying. Not a bad yield when you consider the Futurist was a bimonthly magazine. Mind you they were outnumbered by the plentitude of “Western Civilization will collapse by 1980 becuase it’s running out of mineral resources” articles as well as the “The world will die because of overpopulation by the year 2000″ articles but they were very definitely quite there and by themselves quite numerous. I could go back and do it again and come back with dates and citations if you don’t want to take my unsupported word for it, but I warn you that if I do have to do that I’m going to become very grumpy in stating my opinion of the “scientific” frauds who operated in that time period and what I think they are worth as human beings. No “conspiracy of scientists” is required when you consider that the supposed “scientists” involved are really nothing more than a small gang of common criminals guilty of defrauding the public at government expense and thereby possibly liable to criminal persecution for that alone. Common criminals with degrees in science, perhaps, but common criminals all the same. :p
Look at the scientific literature from the time and the comments of the major scientific organizations of the time and you will not find the pronouncements of a coming ice age. It was limited to pop literature (Time, etc). That is a far cry from the situation today, with now hundreds of articles in the scientific literature (dozens in the prestige publications (Science, Nature, etc) and virtually all major scientific organizations stating that the evidence supports anthropogenically induced climate change. This is not a small group of scientists, it is most of the scientists in the world. So again, if your view requires a mass conspiracy of scientists…
Hmmm. Let’s look at your fact-free post…
“Look at the scientific literature from the time”
Have _you_ done that? How do I do so?
“and the comments of the major scientific organizations of the time”
I’ve already falsified that claim: the NOAA and the NAS.
http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf
“and you will not find the pronouncements of a coming ice age. It was limited to pop literature (Time, etc).”
That “pop literature” citing scientists, of course.
“That is a far cry from the situation today, with now hundreds of articles in the scientific literature”
Ah, you measure truth by weight? What happens when an early paper is wrong,
and many subsequent papers rely on it?
“(dozens in the prestige publications (Science, Nature, etc)”
Trading on prestige? That’snot very scientific – it’s an appeal to authority.
“and virtually all major scientific organizations stating that the evidence supports anthropogenically induced climate change.”
To point to the statements of scientific organisations is to appeal to authority. Major scientific organisations do not poll their members before issuing such proclamations, and have been known to resist attempts of rebellion by their members, as happened to Hal Lewis at the APS. He describes the APS statement on AGW as being “apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/16/hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society/
” This is not a small group of scientists, it is most of the scientists in the world.”
Nonsense. Firstly, most of the scientists in the world are no more qualified to comment than the ordinary man in the street. Sir Paul Nurse, a biologist and head of the Royal Society amply demonstrated that point when he claimed
in a BBC documentary that “humans produce 7 times more CO2 than is produced naturally.(paraphrased)” – a error of two orders of magnitude.
Secondly, dissenting scientists are sidelined; in the media, in conferences, in getting their work published, and in research funding. The consensus is a lie.
“So again, if your view requires a mass conspiracy of scientists…”
It doesn’t: it requires such things as greed and vanity which is never in short supply.
Hmmm. Let’s look at your fact-free post…
“Look at the scientific literature from the time”
Have _you_ done that? How do I do so?
“and the comments of the major scientific organizations of the time”
I’ve already falsified that claim: the NOAA and the NAS.
http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf
“and you will not find the pronouncements of a coming ice age. It was limited to pop literature (Time, etc).”
That “pop literature” citing scientists, of course.
“That is a far cry from the situation today, with now hundreds of articles in the scientific literature”
Ah, you measure truth by weight? What happens when an early paper is wrong,
and many subsequent papers rely on it?
“(dozens in the prestige publications (Science, Nature, etc)”
Trading on prestige? That’snot very scientific – it’s an appeal to authority.
“and virtually all major scientific organizations stating that the evidence supports anthropogenically induced climate change.”
To point to the statements of scientific organisations is to appeal to authority. Major scientific organisations do not poll their members before issuing such proclamations, and have been known to resist attempts of rebellion by their members, as happened to Hal Lewis at the APS. He describes the APS statement on AGW as being “apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/16/hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society/
” This is not a small group of scientists, it is most of the scientists in the world.”
Nonsense. Firstly, most of the scientists in the world are no more qualified to comment than the ordinary man in the street. Sir Paul Nurse, a biologist and head of the Royal Society amply demonstrated that point when he claimed
in a BBC documentary that “humans produce 7 times more CO2 than is produced naturally.(paraphrased)” – a error of two orders of magnitude.
Secondly, dissenting scientists are sidelined; in the media, in conferences, in getting their work published, and in research funding. The consensus is a lie.
“So again, if your view requires a mass conspiracy of scientists…”
It doesn’t: it requires such things as greed and vanity which is never in short supply.
Consensus ain’t science. At one time, consensus held Earth was the center of the Solar System.
I urge everyone to read “The Cooling World,” an article about the coming ice age published in the April 28, 1975 issue of Newsweek, by Peter Gwynne. It is absolutely hilarious. Just change the word “cooling” to “warming” and you have an article that could be published today.
Gwynne’s article isn’t just some blogger’s rant – there were no bloggers in 1975. This was written by a professional journalist and published in a major news magazine, complete with fact checkers, proofreaders, copy editors and managing editors.
Google Peter Gwynne and Our Cooling World or Newsweek and read for yourself the hysterical predictions of impending doom. Look at the charts and graphs.
In defense of Gwynne, he did his homework and quoted many reputable sources in his article. Gwynne himself said years later, “The article was based on the available science of the time.”
But the “science of the time” turned out to be dead wrong.